firehose

tastefullyoffensive:

Comedian Kurt Braunohler raised $6,000 on Kickstarter to “hire a man in a plane to write stupid things in the sky”.

Interstellar Memes (larger)

The first clip has been released for the new version of the improv show Whose Line Is It Anyway? which will premiere on The CW network on Tuesday, July 16, 2013 at 8 PM. The clip is from their special 90210 edition of the show.

video via Richard Pytlik

via Film Thrasher, Pop Culture Brain, Gawker

“I don’t think it’s fair that adoptive persons are treated differently than other people,” Batt told the panel. “If they were biologically born into their families, they would automatically have their story.”

Batt’s story, as you’ve probably guessed, is about adoption. In an interview later, she said she always knew she was adopted, but when she was 19, she decided she wanted to know more. Finally she tracked down her birth mother. The two met one summer day in Seattle, surrounded by relatives.

“I don’t think one single person in the room was not crying that day that occurred,” Batt says. “What the experience provided for me was a sense of cohesion. I have nurture, and I always had access to that. And then there’s nature. And now I finally have access to that. And so I got to make sense of who I am as a whole person.”

A 1998 ballot measure grants open access to birth certificates in Oregon adoption cases. Most other adoption documents are available, but only with a court order. We’re talking about family medical history, a review of the adoptive parents’ home situation, or something called the “adoption petition.”

Beets is a crazy-geeky music toolbox from the command line. I'm not sure if I'd use this but I do appreciate that it exists.

By way of Justin Mayer

Sorry I’ve failed you.

I’ll turn in my “special and different” certificate. 

Go ahead and alert PETA. I’ll accept any and all punishment that they see fit for reblogging a scared kitten. (x)

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and his Expedition 34/35 crewmates, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, have safely returned to Earth after spending the past five months aboard the International Space Station (ISS). They successfully undocked from the ISS and made their return to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft.

Landing in Kazakhstan at 10:31 pm EDT, Hadfield would emerge from the Soyuz in good health, helped by the local ground crew. Hadfield became the first Canadian Commander of the ISS during Expedition 35, performed over 130 science experiments, and was at the center of an impressive social media campaign that captured the attention and support of people from around the world.

We have certainly enjoyed covering Col. Hadfield’s space-to-earth communications here on Laughing Squid and in this recent article on The Atlantic, they write about his internet popularity, “He was the right guy at the right time — and in, wow, the right place…”

He’s a natural performer who seemed truly excited to share his sublime stage with the rest of us. But his performances were intimate rather than epic: He subtly rejected the aura of distant heroism we normally associate with space flyers. Instead, he was nerdy. He was excited. He was delightfully, winkily mustachioed. He was your dad, or your uncle, or your mentor, the kind of guy who probably gets a little choked up when he makes toasts at weddings. Which is to say: He is quirky and real, and he made a point of putting those facts to use. He took all the corporate logic of social media — the ethos of the “personal brand,” the edict of “conversation rather than presentation” — and applied it, seamlessly, to his life in space.

144 days on the #ISS, 146 days in space, 2,336 orbits around the planet and clocked almost 62 million miles. What a ride!

— CanadianSpaceAgency (@csa_asc) May 14, 2013

Safely home – back on Earth, happily readapting to the heavy pull of gravity. Wonderful to smell and feel Spring.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Forgot to mention: first long, hot shower since December. That felt so good! Step 1 of Return to Earth complete.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 14, 2013

Back in North America! Walking around the Bangor, Maine airport, getting my Earth legs back. Fresh, clean air has never been so sweet.

— Chris Hadfield (@Cmdr_Hadfield) May 15, 2013

video by Canadian Space Agency

fmtownsmarty:

http://i.imgur.com/D2ddv3S.png

Everyone blows

Mammas is a playful & bizarre web series about animal motherhood that is written, directed, and performed by Isabella Rossellini. In each short episode, Rossellini dons elaborate costumes and acts out the behavior of a mother from the animal kingdom (including eating her own babies as a mamma hamster). Presented by the Sundance Channel, the series is the third installment of Green Porno.

photos and video via the Sundance Channel

via The World’s Best Ever

Nearly half of teens surveyed in a recent study admitted they'd texted while driving – a disquieting statistic, given that more than 3,000 teenagers died last year while sending/receiving SMS messages behind the wheel. (Compare that to the roughly 2,700 teens killed annually due to drunk driving.)

Read more...

If you go to Google Maps, click “Get Directions,” select walking, and search for directions from The Shire to Mordor, this amusing Lord of the Rings Easter egg from Google will caution you that “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

via Chris Hardwick

The lines at Disney World are awful, we can all agree, but the lengths to which some people will go to bypass them are worse. Wealthy Manhattan parents are reportedly using a service that typically assists disabled children around the theme park to drive their non-disabled families around in a "handicapped" scooter, allowing them to skip lines by up to two hours.

It sounds like something out of a "Modern Seinfeld" episode. But in this case, the horrible people are real. And they're spectacularly crass.

"You can't go to Disney without a tour concierge," one rich mom said, according to the New York Post. "This is how the 1 percent does Disney."

Well, gross. This is, above all, a problem of basic human decency. But it is also a problem of black markets -- or legal markets extended illegally (or extra-legally) to people who shouldn't qualify.

The official Disney VIP Tour includes guides and premium fast passes for between $300 and $400 per hour. That's much more expensive than a $130-per-hour disability service afforded by Dream Tours Florida. There's a very simple explanation for the price difference: The VIP tickets are priced to where the rich will pay (and also to weed out all but the richest families to keep the service exclusive); whereas, the disability tour company sees all families with a disabled person as consumers. So these rich families reportedly using Dream Tours Florida aren't benefiting from a peculiarly effective and peculiarly cheap service, precisely because neither the service nor the price is intended to serve wealthy families. They're benefiting from a service they don't deserve at a price far below where the real luxury market for fast passes has settled.

Markets in everything, you might say. Sure. Regulation (and retribution) in everything would be good, too.

We've reached out to Dream Tours Florida and will report back when we hear.

“He’s been tricked. He’s been deceived. I think in Moriarty’s eyes you could say he bottomed out over nothing,” Doherty continued, referencing Sherlock’s nemesis, who appears to have been the one who texted the genius sleuth the address where Sherlock found Irene (played by “The Tudors” and “Game of Thrones” star Natalie Dormer) alive. “He spiraled out of control because he thought Irene was dead when in fact she was quite alive and being kept my Moriarty.

see? you don’t have to be Moffat to fridge Irene Adler. anyone can do it

except Arthur Conan Doyle, natch

Seattle’s former franchise, the Oklahoma City Thunder, is playing a Macklemore song during games to get fans excited. Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty, is a Seattle native and diehard Seattle sports fan. Upon hearing this news, suffice it to say Macklemore wasn’t pleased.

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]